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[Python-Dev] towards a stricter definition of sys.executable

Barry Warsaw barry at python.org
Thu Mar 16 23:25:39 CET 2006 
On Thu, 2006-03-16 at 12:02 +0100, Fredrik Lundh wrote:

>     a) sys.executable points to the executable that was used to load the
>     Python interpreter library/dll.
> 
>     this use is supported by the docstring and the implementation, and is quite
>     common in the wild.  an application using this interpretation may
> 
>     - call sys.executable to run another instance of itself
>     - extract data from resources embedded in (or attached to) sys.executable
>     - locate configuration data etc via os.path.dirname(sys.executable)

Yep, that's how our embedded apps use sys.executable.

> to fix this, I propose adding another sys variable; for example, let sys.executable
> keep behaving like case (a) (which is how it's implemented today), and add a new
> sys.python_executable for case (b).  the latter can then be set to None if a proper
> interpreter cannot be located.

As long as sys.executable behaving like a) doesn't change, that seems
fine with me. ;)

-Barry

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